The sight of a wheelchair-bound patient with huge lymphoedematous legs being wheeled into the consulting room, limbs wrapped in soggy oozing bandages, lymph dripping on to the floor, is not an encouraging one. For the clinician, whether vascular surgeon, dermatologist or oncologist, there are few spectacular therapeutic rabbits to be pulled out of the hat; for the patient, there has often been a lifetime of increasing disability and frustration. There must be particular disillusionment when patients are pronounced 'cured' of cancer only to find their lives blighted by gross lymphoedema of an arm or leg. No wonder, then, that the subject has not been fashionable.